The Abyss Gazes Back
by Blacknoise
Summary: "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you." ― Friedrich Nietzsche The Juubi offers Kakashi a kindness. Of sorts. Canon to 638. Trigger warning for dubcon/noncon.


Obito, bleeding out through a tremendous hole in his chest, raving like a fucking lunatic, slides back through the spiraling vortex and out of sight.

Kakashi collapses back onto his haunches, blood pounding in his ears. The hazy quiet rushes in around him. He is alone in the darkness. He tries, tries to muster the chakra to his Sharingan so that he can return to the battlefield, but he can't. He's run himself empty too many times already in this war.

Will he have to stay here until he's recovered his energy? With no medic, no support—it could be a long stay. He's surely needed back in the battle. Here, there is no way of knowing how the Alliance is faring. He makes a tight, frustrated noise. He'd pace restlessly if he had the energy to do so.

Situational assessment, then. He looks down to check on his stab wound. He's been pierced through and through in his abdomen, but he had been able to quickly cauterize the site by sparking his electric chakra through the rod Obito had pierced him with. Obviously, it is not an immediately fatal wound, but it's surely severe enough to be worried about. Perhaps he could close the wound in front—he did have a suture kit in his flak jacket—but he'd never be able to reach his back, and he has little idea what to do about the internal damage. He had had a vial of morphine and a short syringe in his hip-pack, but it'd shattered hours ago during the battle. He finds himself wishing for Sakura, or Shizune, or _someone_ to patch him up accurately and quickly; at this rate he'd just sit around until the wound festered and he died of septic shock. Or starved.

He counts his breaths in the shadows. Tries to take his mind off the pain. For a time, it almost works.

Then something comes slithering back through the gap in dimensions.

Kakashi looks up sharply and scrambles painfully to his feet.

It wears Obito's body, but Kakashi gets no sense from it of the man he knew. Obito's chakra has vanished entirely, and so has the hole that Kakashi had ripped through his chest. This creature's hair and skin are bleached bone-white, its eyes darkly ringed. There are scales—_tails_—erupting from its naked torso, and the very air around it shivers.

It is godlike. Terrible.

"Obito?" _What have you done_? This is the Juubi, Kakashi realizes, suddenly stricken with an animal panic—the mindless need to flee. And if the Juubi has followed him into Kamui, what the hell is waiting for him back on the battlefield?

"Irrelevant," it says with Obito's mouth, expression dead and still, save for eyes that show a little too much white. It seems inwardly focused, fascinated.

"He hates," the thing says, and there is a pensive note to its otherwise toneless voice.

It thrums with a strange energy, with a thick and concentrated chakra-that-isn't chakra that Kakashi can feel like a scorching on his skin. Like a deep radiation burn.

"He hurts." It stares at the wound in Kakashi's abdomen. It blinks and the torn flesh begins to heal. The pain recedes. It blinks again and the wound rips open and releases fresh gouts of blood. Kakashi screams, collapsing to his knees and arching back against the platform's surface, pounding his fist desperately against the ground. Not a ripple of emotion crosses the creature's face. It stitches Kakashi together and rips him apart over and over, eyes trained on the wound, the blood.

"He cries," it says, quiet. The wound is half-open, and that's the way it stays. Kakashi curls around it, breathing in short staccato bursts. He coughs. Tastes blood. _Fuck_. He probably can't summon the chakra to seal the wound again.

The threat remains, though, and his training kicks in. He masters himself in moments, struggles to his feet. His heart pounds harder, and he feels another warm line of blood trickling down his back for all his effort.

A ninja should _not_ engage where success is not ensured. A ninja should retreat, regroup, and find reinforcements.

Kakashi knows this. He knows the rules better than anyone.

But there are no reinforcements to be had. Kakashi is acutely aware of how very alone he is. How he's certainly going to die here. Though he knows that it's futile, he swings at the monster's head, far too weak to use Raikiri. He's aiming for its eyes.

Sharingan. Rinnegan. He knows he doesn't stand a chance.

The Rinnegan freezes him in place, steals all his momentum. The Sharingan causes his kunai to slip from nerveless fingers. He should be able to counter at least this, but his own Sharingan is barely functioning, and this creature has every bijuu's chakra at its beck and call. Kakashi is outgunned in every sense of the word. He feels like an insect that's caught the attention of an especially talented cat. On some instinctual level, he senses that he will be toyed with before he's torn apart.

It looks at him a moment longer, almost considering. "He wants," it says, eyes blank and stepping closer. Kakashi wants to back away. He wants to run off into the darkness of Kamui and never look back. The monster won't let him.

It tilts its head a fraction, just so, and Kakashi gasps, suddenly flooded with an out-of-place feeling, a base and primal arousal that threatens to knock him off his feet. He's hard in moments, nevermind the hole in his side and the cold snaking dread in his gut. That not-chakra has reached down and hooked into every living cell in his body and is commanding each of them like some colossal puppetmaster. _God_, he thinks, _not like this. Not like this._

Kakashi's clothing is constricting him. He feels too hot, itching all over with the need to strip. His hands fumble clumsily with his torn and bloodied flak jacket, the fabric causing maddening friction as it grazes his skin. He's on fire. He's adrift. He's panting and writhing like some wanton and he can't stop himself.

"Please, I—" Kakashi blurts, words coming before thought, and the thing huffs, once; some remote sort of amusement perhaps.

Distantly, he sees himself still bleeding, sluggish dark blood dripping from his side and all over the blue-gray platform. Obito must have nicked his liver when he ran him through. He ought to marvel that he's physically able to be hard at all when he's bleeding out steadily, when he's sick with fear and such a deep sadness, but he can hardly focus to consider it. The biological drive is thrumming through him, turning his mind into a maelstrom of directionless lust.

The thing that wears Obito's skin moves abruptly, much faster than Kakashi can track. There's the sudden whisper of cool, still air as his clothing falls in tatters all around him. Kakashi hears himself groan in relief, the sound so strange it could have been another man's voice.

"He would want to see you. Your face," it says, perhaps by way of explanation.

Kakashi's face is as naked as the rest of him. He has never felt more exposed in his life. Yet his body says _touch, fuck, submit_, and he's reaching toward this alabaster creature like it's water in the desert.

Its eyes glitter bright in the gloom, watching.

It allows him to advance, that deep burning energy coiling through Kakashi's skin, through his organs and bones and out beyond. The energy pulls at him like tiny hooks, tricking his body into believing this is something he'd want.

Kakashi's fingers trace its torso, its smooth unyielding alien skin. He'd want to imagine that this was truly Obito—and he _had_ imagined it in the past, more often than he would care to admit—but he can't. This feels nothing like a human being. Touching this thing's chest sends a near-burning intensity chasing up his arms, bleeding more of its influence into his already helpless body. His balls ache. He wants to come already, and it hasn't so much as touched him yet. In his head, Kakashi is raging, fighting, but his hands just slide lower, to Obito's tattered pants, grasping at the thing's flaccid dick like he's starving for it.

In the safe spaces of his mind, he shudders.

It slithers out of what remains of Obito's clothing, and it takes one, maybe two breaths before its cock is erect. Kakashi flushes, salivates, stares. It looks at Kakashi intently, the way a hawk watches a vole. And Kakashi gets on his hands and knees and faces away, body quivering in anticipation, ass lifted high.

Kakashi looks out into the dark geometric gloom and knows the scream building inside him will not come out.

He hums in pleasure (curses and fights) when its hands grip his hips. Instead of the blunt, tearing pressure he anticipates, he finds himself being turned gently—inexorably and impossible to fight against, but gently just the same—to lie on his back.

"He would want to see you," it repeats, staring with those wide eyes, and Kakashi feels a wave of nauseous shame even as his battered body scrambles to obey the creature's whim. He looks up to face it, legs parting automatically, cock standing firm and ready.

Obito had always been handsome, Kakashi thinks, scars or no.

But this isn't Obito anymore.

Kakashi wishes for yielding flesh, clammy skin and the sweat of fatigue. He wishes for Obito as he was, broken and terrible but still _himself_ somewhere inside. Not this monster that wears his face like a mask. Death would have been kinder.

Its body is denser than human tissue, durable and impossibly smooth. It's like a marble statue, a religious effigy raised in Obito's honour. Chest to chest with it in this silent place, Kakashi feels so incredibly small.

It positions Kakashi like a doll, bending him back and spreading him and settling inside with an unnatural smoothness, no painful stretch, only instant searing pleasure and absolute fullness that makes Kakashi's eyes roll back. His body accepts the monster's trespass in a way that seems almost eager. He whines and writhes until it begins to move, setting a steady rhythm that reminds him of funeral drums.

It mouths at his neck and strokes him off as it fucks him, accurate in a way no lover has ever been. It's playing him like an instrument and he is helpless. So, so helpless.

"He _wants_ you," it murmurs in his ear, and Kakashi can all but feel his heart breaking, "He dreamed of having you like this, often, and it _frightened_ him." It rocks sharply into Kakashi's body, and he howls, every atom of him burning with fevered heat. It's hard to see straight; he only wants _air_ if it is dragged into him on the rhythm of their motion. It feels so good, and the fact that it feels good at all disgusts him. He claws at its back, grabbing at the base of those strange _tails_.

"_Fear_," the creature says the word like it's a remote concept, "He is so full of fear." Kakashi wants to sob, but his body will only allow him to moan, to cling tighter, to fuck back harder.

_If you're in there, Obito—if you're anywhere in there—it's alright. I'm here, you're going to be alright._ It is wishful thinking, of course, but Kakashi needs to stay grounded somehow.

It flicks its eyes over him as though it's heard his thoughts. Who knows, perhaps it has. "I will let him have this one thing," it says cryptically, though Kakashi understands its meaning. He knows it in his bones.

A sudden chill runs through Kamui, raising goosebumps all over Kakashi's fevered skin. The rhythm of their coupling falters, the implacable power that fuels it it fades. Somehow Kamui, which had begun to feel small and close, expands out into immensity again. The raw, animal drive propelling Kakashi recedes, leaving misery and receding arousal to mingle. The pain of his wound blooms anew.

A tear falls onto Kakashi's cheek and slides off to the side. Then another.

He looks up into Obito's eyes. His wide, frightened, _human_ eyes.

Obito says "_Kakashi,_" with a breaking voice. He sounds terrified.

This is far too cruel. Kakashi casts his gaze skyward. Blinks back stinging tears. What the fuck can he do? What's left?

"I'm so sorry," Obito whispers, his chest heaving with sobs, his whole body shaking, "I was _sure_ this was the right thing, I swear—"

Kakashi lies pressed under Obito's body, his blood congealing beneath him, connected, penetrated by the one person that he'd lived his life for. In honour of.

"Obito—" what on earth is there to say?

Against all likelihood, Obito hasn't gone soft, and neither has he. And Kakashi wants to blame the Juubi for all of it, but damn them both, he can't. He hates himself for it.

Obito looks down between their bodies as if seeing everything for the first time. Just now notices Kakashi's legs up on his shoulders, how deeply he's buried inside him. He looks lost. Confused.

"Wh—" Obito starts. He sounds like a kid again.

Kakashi chooses to be brave. He's failed Obito too many times in this life to fail him again. Not now. "Shh," he speaks softly, gently. His voice sounds hoarse and weak to his ears. He reaches up and cups Obito's cheek. "Eyes on me, alright?" Obito looks him in the eye, not bitter, not angry, just desperately sad and grasping for something human. Something _alive_.

Kakashi curves his hips upward and Obito exhales sharply, following Kakashi's lead and pushing in against him. It's so different than mere moments before, the artificial, forced attention of an inscrutable beast. No, now it's Obito himself, as vulnerable as he's ever been. Lost and lonely.

Kakashi won't think about how it could have been between them. He _can't_.

Obito bows his forehead down onto his, his rhythm irregular. He leans in, presses lips to Kakashi's temple. Kakashi feels the apologies Obito is mouthing there, pressed against his hairline. And Kakashi holds him through it, murmuring his own apologies, determined to see this through to the end.

It feels wrong to take any pleasure from this desperate coupling in the twilight of the world when everyone outside this private dimension could be dead—or as good as. It's wrong, surely, to be pulling this monstrous thing into a lover's embrace. This thing—and this man—who's torn the living world to shreds with his delusion. But it's _Obito_. It's Obito and he will forever be the axis upon which Kakashi's universe spins.

Obito gasps, bucking short and shallow, and he's taken Kakashi's cock in hand. Obito presses his face into Kakashi's cheek now, kissing his jaw, his chin, his lips. Kakashi distantly registers that this is the first time Obito has ever seen his face. He's grateful, somehow, even now, for this. He kisses Obito back and wills two decades of love and devotion into it. All the things he can't say. All the things he wouldn't know _how_ to say.

Obito kisses him just as hard, teeth, tongue and lips, and Kakashi imagines his feelings returned in that gesture. For a second, in spite of everything, Kakashi feels something akin to joy.

Then it ends abruptly, Obito shouting hoarsely and spilling wet warmth inside him just as Kakashi tightens up and comes hard, surrendering everything he has left.

It's hard to catch his breath, lightheaded and weakened as he is. He can barely feel his legs as they slip limply to either side of Obito, and his heart is jack-hammering away in his chest. There's a chill setting in, and he's beginning to realize that it's not just from the air. He's lost an awful lot of blood.

Obito exhales shakily, gently pulling out of Kakashi, shifting off of him. The cold rushes in faster. His teeth begin to chatter. He's nearly certain his lips have turned blue. They certainly feel numb. Kakashi reaches for Obito blindly, heart still going a mile a minute. He can't seem to find enough air, and he feels so very close to fainting. Kamui looks strange and unfamiliar now and his eyes roll to and fro, vision graying at the corners..

Obito presses closer to Kakashi's side again, sharing some small meager heat that Kakashi is still grateful for.

"Is this it?" Obito asks, "The end?" He sounds so diminished. So small. His hand grazes Kakashi's wound, and Kakashi feels that hand tremble.

"I don't know," Kakashi says truthfully. He looks over to Obito—the chalk-white hair and smooth-scaled skin that is so very alien on him. There's so much Kakashi still needed to show him.

Obito sucks in air suddenly, stiffening. "Ka—" he blurts. He gives Kakashi one loaded glance—regret, grief—and then it is over. That alien energy returns, irradiating everything in its reach. Obito's frightened face settles into masklike stillness and his body gets to its feet smoothly, naked and perfect. There are smears of Kakashi's blood on his hands, knees, and belly, stark crimson on his ivory body. It looks at its soiled palms with a far-away sort of interest.

"A kindness," the thing that looks like Obito says, "for restoring me to the earth."

Kakashi looks up at it, dizzy and weak from his wounds. He could cry, but the energy simply isn't there. He's sore, spent, finished. He closes his eyes for a long moment.

When he opens his eyes he finds himself out of the silence of Kamui and back in a world gone just as still. The sky is awash in red, and the moon rises enormous and full, casting the Juubi's jinchuuriki into sinister profile.

Kakashi glances around the battlefield. It's perfectly silent here too; bodies fallen haphazardly, some of them dead, some of them staring skyward in a deathlike trance. With one look around he sees shinobi he knows; kage and chuunin and jounin alike, the blond-on-orange of Naruto, the crumpled pink and red of Sakura, his students, his colleagues. They're all gone. The war is over.

There's no need to cover himself, no more need for shame. It's only him, the monster, and the moonlight, after all.

The monster crafts a parody of a smile, its lips curling back from its teeth. Its basilisk stare intensifies, and now Kakashi feels pinned like an insect specimen. He is faint, bled out, drained. Paralyzed with sorrow and dread in the face of that overwhelming, bottomless fount of energy that's bright as the sun compared to his guttering candle-flame. Kakashi can see infinity, the void yawning out silent and terrible behind the eyes that used to belong to Obito. It begins to beckon him. He begins to heed its call.

But he'll try one last time. "_Obito_—"

"No," the creature says simply, and the despair caused by that one word leaches the very last ounce of fight from Kakashi's bones. "He is gone."

Those eyes are all he can see. Mismatched eyes, a red moon, the black void. He is long past the point of feeling now. "Then let me follow."

The monster nods.

All of reality pulses like a heartbeat.

Oblivion descends.


End file.
